Why your favourite didn’t win Eurovision – Part 1: The lower reaches

Eurovision 2018 who finished at the bottom?
A look back at Eurovision 2018 - the lower end of the scoreboard

As has become traditional, I will try to give you some insight into why Europe talked the shits about your national representative. You might not like ’em but, brutal honesty is what we are all about.

26th Portugal
Avg Jury position – 18.10   Avg Televoting position – 22.95

Complete disconnect from both televote and jury. Possibly one of the worst entries seen through the new system, ranked last in 25 televotes. This would be because the song had hardly any redeeming features. A local song for local people, though not for the contest.

25th Finland
Avg Jury position – 17.41   Avg Televoting position – 18.60

So Saara’s record of not winning any singing contest she’s been entered in against competitors remains intact. Maybe there was a kitchen sink factor rather than an X-Factor in the song and staging. It looked too clinical and too clever by half. Perhaps if she’d just have sung the song?

24th – United Kingdom
Avg Jury Position – 16.24   Avg Televote Position – 17.55

As usual, I shall do a longer article on the UK and its relative merits, suffice it to say here that back in old Blighty, it didn’t matter cos ‘some dick damaged her’.

23rd  Spain
Avg Jury Position – 15.02   Avg Televote Position – 21.16

First off – a bit of self reflective glory. “I TOLD YOU THIS WAS SHIT AND YOU DIDN’T BELIEVE ME”. Back to objectivity, it’s simple really. Europe didn’t like a “relationship” that looked fake and contrived. They didn’t connect with anyone and the juries threw it a bit of sympathy but the honest truth – it’s a shockingly bad song sung by two singers with limited talent.

22nd Slovenia
Avg Jury Position – 15.69   Avg Televote Position – 20.76

“Don’t spoil the joke” they said. We didn’t need to because they had to change the joke from the Semi Final because they said: “It’s happened again”. Rule number 1, don’t insult the hosts. Rule number 2, it seems, don’t annoy the televoters with tricks designed to deflect away from your song. Juries liked the first couple of minutes of craft, televoters thought the gap was silly.

21st Hungary
Avg Jury Position – 18.55   Avg Televote Position – 13.21

The juries panned this song, so much so that in average position it’s worse than Portugal and the song really really isn’t. The predominately middle-aged white man jury didn’t get this “noise” but the televoters did. A sign that the demographic of the juries should be tweaked to allow all genres a fair chance?

20th  Australia
Avg Jury Position – 12.38  Avg Televote Position – 16.95

I said all along this was Australia’s worst entry and the points backed it up.  IMHO she was very lucky to get through Wednesday night unscathed but the stagecraft that was shown to come back from that was admirable.  However come final night she oversung it and as Juries voted for it cos Australia innit, televoters saw an awful performance of a dodgy song.  They gave it what it deserved.

 

  

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